The anti-racism task force is no more
In a surprise move, FIFA has disbanded its anti-racism task force, having declared that they have completed the work and have now disbanded the task force.
As per a report by Rob Harris of Associated Press, it has been revealed that FIFA wrote to the members of the task force stating that the unit has “completely fulfilled it temporary mission” and “is hereby dissolved and no longer in operation.”
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Racism in football has reared its ugly head time and again and with ongoing concerns about racist behaviour in Russia, hosts of the 2018 World Cup, it is quite incomprehensible as to why the task force has been disbanded.
The task force was initially established in the year 2013 by Sepp Blatter, the then FIFA President. Since then, officials of FIFA have been pulled up for racketeering charges, corruption, and other criminal activities.
FIFA’s position on the issue of racism has been clearly outlined under Article 3 F the FIFA Statute, which prohibits discrimination of any kind, be it country, private person on account of ethnic origin, gender, language, politics or any reason. Also, it states that any such act of racism is punishable by suspension or expulsion.
However, the disbanding of the committee has been confirmed by Gerd Dembowski, FIFA’s Diversity and Anti-Discrimination Manager, and he went on to say in a statement that the task force recommendations have been implemented.
A new initiative
Instead, FIFA brought to attention the “anti-discrimination monitoring system” which has been adopted at matches. The system is basically the deployment of Anti-Discrimination Match Observers to monitor and report issues of discrimination at the games.
It is a joint initiative taken by FIFA and FARE, an organisation with long experience in the fight against discrimination in football alongside the match observers. Launched in May 2015, it was introduced to promote diversity in football. However, the disbanding of the task force comes at a crucial time with racism in football reportedly on the rise in Russia.
In a report prepared by FARE and Sova network, released in February 2015, they expressed their concerns about various displays of racism that was present among fans of the Russian Premier League clubs such as Spartak, CSKA, Zenit , Lokomotiv etc.
The report went on to state how xenophobic fans were also trying to force their will onto the management of football clubs citing the manifesto example of Zenit fans against gay and black players.
Radical fans in Russia have also shown off racist tattoos, badges and have made them available in online fan shops as well. As a result, one of the recommendations in the report was to develop a national action plan that would battle the problem of xenophobia and racism.
